Chapter 13. A Fortune And A Fright

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_ CHAPTER XIII. A FORTUNE AND A FRIGHT

"She is hiding," said Anne.

But though they hunted and called, not a sign of the missing girl could they find.

When Launcelot came, Anne was almost in tears.

"She must be here somewhere," she said. "It's too bad. We shall be late."

"No, we won't," said Launcelot, who had listened without a word to the tale of Judy's shortcomings and final disappearance. "We will not be late, Anne, for if Judy doesn't come in just three minutes, we will go without her."

"Oh, no, no, no," protested Anne, all her grievances against Judy forgotten in the face of such a calamity. "We can't leave her behind."

"She will leave herself behind," said Launcelot, "for mother can't miss the boat. She has promised her friends that she will meet them."

"But my dear," protested gentle Mrs. Bart, "we can surely wait until the last minute. Judy only intends it as a joke, and it is too bad to leave her."

But Launcelot was in an explosive mood. The morning had been a trying one for him. He had hurried through a half-day's work in an hour and a half, he had eaten hardly any breakfast for fear he should keep the girls waiting, and now--to be treated like this!

"We can't wait any longer," he said, looking at his watch. "I am sorry, Anne, but we shall just have to leave Judy behind."

Again Anne started to protest, but the little grandmother shook her head. "Judy deserves it," she said. "She is too old to be so childish."

"Maybe she is waiting down the road somewhere," said Anne, hopefully. "I think she is trying to fool us."

But Judy was not waiting down the road. She was in the orchard behind the plum-tree.

"It won't hurt Launcelot to wait," she had, thought as she hid herself, "I will make him think I am not going--"

But she had not dreamed that they would go without her, and when she saw Anne climb in and the carriage start off, she ran forward wildly.

"Wait," she called, "wait for me."

But the carriage whirled on in a cloud of dust, and her voice echoed on the empty air.

By the time Judy reached the house Mrs. Batcheller had gone in, and so the little girl ran down the road unseen. "Perhaps they will stop for me," she thought, and her eyes were strained after the flying vehicle.

But it did not stop, and at last warm and tired Judy dropped down by the roadside, a forlorn figure.

"I didn't think they would leave me," she thought disconsolately.

After a while she got up and started towards the house. She dreaded to face Mrs. Batcheller, however, and she sat down again to decide upon a plan for spending the day.

She would not stay in the little gray cottage, that was a sure thing, and to go back to the Judge's meant a dull day by herself.

As she mused, a cheery whistle sounded down the road. "A Life on the Ocean Wave" was the tune and Judy started to her feet.

"Oh, Tommy Tolliver, Tommy Tolliver," she called, "come here."

Tommy rounded the curve in the road and stared at her.

"Say, I thought you were going with Anne," he said. "They just passed me down the road."

"Did they?" asked Judy, indifferently. "Well, at the last minute I thought I wouldn't go."

"Well, you missed it," said Tommy, aggravatingly. "Lake Limpid's great--and Launcelot can sail a boat like anything."

"Oh, can he?" said Judy, faintly. She loved to sail, and Tommy's words brought before her a vision of the pleasure she had forfeited.

There was silence for several minutes, then Judy said:

"Tommy, do you know where the gipsies are camping?"

Tommy waved her away.

"I can't take you there," he said, "I have promised I won't."

"'Nobody asked you, sir, she said,'" Judy's tone was withering. "I asked you where it was."

"Oh."

"Well, tell me."

Tommy wriggled.

"Are you going there?"

"Perhaps."

"Well, you'd better not. Launcelot won't like it."

"Oh, Launcelot, Launcelot." Judy's voice was scornful. "I don't care what Launcelot likes, Tommy Tolliver."

"Oh, don't you?" cried Tommy, brightening. "Well, then--"

But he stopped suddenly. "No, I can't tell you," he said, miserably.

"Why not?"

"I can't.

"Oh, well, you needn't," said Judy. "But I can find out. And I'm going."

"You'd better not," warned Tommy, yet hoping she would do it.

"I'll go with you," he agreed, "if you will promise not to tell."

"I don't want you to go," asserted Judy. "I want you to tell me how to get there."

Tommy told her as well as he could.

"That doesn't seem very clear," said Judy, when he had finished. "But I guess I can find it--and Tommy"--she fixed him with a stern glance--"don't you tell any one where I am--not any one--or I sha'n't ever speak to you again--"

"All right," said Tommy. "And don't you let on to Launcelot that I told you which way to go."

"Good-bye," said Judy.

"Good-bye," said Tommy.

And off they started in different directions, feeling like a pair of conspirators.

For the first half-mile Judy enjoyed her walk. The sky was blue, and the air was soft, and there were violets on the banks and forget-me-nots in the field, and the orchards were pink with bloom.

There were birds everywhere, from the great black crows, strutting over the red hills of newly planted corn, to the tiny gray sparrows, that slipped through the dusty grass at the roadside.

And in spite of the fact that she had started on a forbidden quest, Judy was happy. For the first time since she had come to the Judge's she was alone and free--with no reckoning to come until evening.

She stepped along lightly, but after a while she went more slowly, and by the time she reached the thick piece of woodland where the gipsies were encamped, she was tired out. They were not far from the road, for she could hear the thrum of the guitars, and voices raised as if in a quarrel.

The voices were stilled as Judy's white-gowned figure appeared under the over-arching oaks.

The dark young leader, who had been at the Judge's, uttered something in a warning voice to a sullen young woman who lounged against a pile of bright-colored rugs, and with whom he had been having evidently a fierce argument. She wore a soiled, silken cap, loaded with gilt coins, and her dress was in tawdry reds and yellows, yet picturesque and becoming to her dark beauty. She stared insolently at Judy as the latter came forward, but the young leader was smiling and profuse in his welcome.

"You have come," he said, "and alone?"

Something in his tone made Judy draw away from him.

"Yes," she said, and then, peremptorily, "I want my fortune told."

"I will speak to the queen," he said, and left her, with another of his flashing smiles.

The camp life as Judy looked upon it presented an alluring picture to one of her romantic turn of mind. Back in the darkness and dimness of a cave-like opening in the rocks, an old woman bent over a charcoal brazier. Her hair, gray and grizzled, fell over a yellow face that, lighted by the blue flames, took on a hag-like aspect. Her skinny hands moved as if in incantations, and Judy shivered with the mystery of it until the strong and unmistakable odor of beef and onion stew rose on the air and relieved her mind as to the nature of the brew which might have been of "wool of bat and tongue of dog" for all she knew to the contrary.

A group of swarthy men lounged under the trees and down by the stream a half-dozen children played with a half-dozen dogs. The children were fat and rosy, and the curs lean and cadaverous, and the dozen of them had stared at Judy as she came into the camp in animal-like curiosity, and then had gone on with their playing.

From one of the two big wagons drawn up near the road came the wailing of an infant, and in the other a woman, half-hidden by the curtain, sat weaving a bright-colored basket.

"Do you all work at basket weaving?" Judy asked the silent girl on the rugs.

"I do not work," was the answer. Then she tossed her head, defiantly. "I will not work. They cannot make me."

She started to say more, but she stopped as the dark young leader came back.

He had spoken to the old woman who presided at the fire, and Judy saw her wipe her hands and make for a dilapidated tent under an oak.

It was to this tent that she was directed, and when she was once within and her eyes had grown accustomed to the darkness, she saw the old hag, looking more witch-like than ever, with her head tied up in a flaming yellow bandanna, and her shoulders wrapped in a great cloak covered with cabalistic signs.

"Cross my hand with silver," she murmured, and Judy took out the only piece of money she had with her--a silver quarter of a dollar.

The old woman looked at it with dissatisfaction. "That is not enough," she said. "I can tell you nothing for that."

"But I haven't any more," said Judy, in dismay. "I didn't expect to come, and it is all I have."

"Oh, well," grudgingly, "I will tell you a little."

She took Judy's hand in hers and studied the palm.

"You will live to be old," she said, monotonously. "There are double rings around your wrist. You will marry a man with wealth and with gray eyes."

"I don't want to know that--" said Judy, impatiently, to whom such matters were as yet unimportant. "Tell me about--about--other things."

"Hush," said the gipsy, "I must say, what I must say. You will go on a long journey. It will be on the sea. You will look for one who is lost. You are a child of the sea--" She flung Judy's hand away from her. "That is all," she said, heavily, "I can tell you no more without more money."

"Oh, oh," cried Judy, breathlessly, "how did you know it. How did you know that I was a child of the sea--"

"What I tell, I know," crooned the old woman, theatrically. "I can tell nothing without silver."

"But I haven't any more money," cried poor Judy.

"But a ring, a pin, they will do as well,"' the old woman looked at her greedily.

"I don't wear jewelry," said Judy, "I don't care for it."

"A chain, a charm, then," urged the old woman, whose eagle eyes had caught the outline of something that glittered beneath the thin lace collar of Judy's gown.

"I have nothing."

"There, there,--what have you there?" and the yellow finger tapped Judy's throat.

Judy drew back with a little shudder, and shook her head as she showed the thin gold chain with a pearl clasp on the end of which was a quaint silver coin.

"I couldn't let you have this," she said. "My mother always wore it. It is a Spanish coin. My father found two of them on the beach near our home, and he gave mother one, and he kept the other--they are just alike. Oh, no, I couldn't give you that--"

"I will tell you many things--about one who has gone away," tempted the old woman.

For a moment Judy wavered. "Oh, I can't," she decided. "I can't let you have this."

The old woman got up. "Then go," she said roughly.

All at once there came over Judy a feeling of fear. She turned quickly and saw the young leader in the door behind her. There was something sinister in his looks, and between the two she felt trapped.

"Let me out," she panted. "Let me out."

With a smile, the man in the door drew aside, and she stepped out into the daylight. As she did so, he whispered to the old woman, "What did you get?"

"Nothing. But the girl has on a chain with a pearl in it that would buy us food for a year."

"Oh!"

He followed Judy quickly.

"Stay, and we will play for you," he urged.

But her nerves were shaken.

"No, no," she said, hurriedly, "I must go home."

"You must stay until we play," he insisted, and called the men together, and Judy, still trembling from the moment of dread in the dark tent, sank down once more beside the sullen girl on the rugs.

But the leader called the girl away for a moment, and when she came back she sat closer to Judy than before, and her hand was busy with the fastening of the chain at the back--but so lightly, so deftly, that Judy sat unconscious.

And in the intervals of the music the girl laughed and chatted, telling Judy of the life on the road, of anything to hold her attention.

"You would look like one of us," she said, "if you wore one of these," and she threw across Judy's shoulders a scarf of red silk.

"I believe I am half gipsy," said Judy, trying to be agreeable, but shrinking with a feeling of repulsion from the untidy creature so near her.

The girl drew away the scarf with a loud laugh and a triumphant nod and a wink to the leader, and presently the music stopped.

"I must go," said Judy, more and more in dread of these strange people.

Once more the old woman bent over the blue flames; but the children had gone deeper into the wood, and the place was silent except for the occasional guttural remark of one of the men, or a wail from the baby in the wagon.

"I must go," she said again, and started off.

But when she reached the road, the young leader caught up with her.

"You are beautiful," he said, when he was beyond the hearing of the others.

Judy hurried on in silence, but he kept by her side. "You are beautiful," he said again, and laid his hand on her arm.

Then Judy whirled around on him. "Don't speak to me that way again," she said, imperiously. "I may be alone and helpless, and I know now that I was very foolish to come. But my grandfather is a Judge. If anything happens to me, he will call you to account. Go back to the camp. Go back and let me alone."

The man stopped short and gazed at her.

"You are brave," he said, in a more respectful tone.

"None of my family have ever been cowards," said Judy, who was herself again. "I am not afraid of you."

His bold eyes dropped before the fearlessness in hers.

"Good-bye," he said, humbly, and when he reached the edge of the camp he turned and looked after her, and there was a shadow on his swarthy face.

The girl on the pile of rugs called him.

"I got it," she said.

"Give it to me," he ordered, roughly. But she held the necklace away from him with a teasing laugh. "It is mine, it is mine," she cried, then shrieked, as he wrenched it out of her hand, twisting her wrist cruelly.

Judy, alone once more and with her courage all gone, so that she was so weak that she could hardly stand, ran on and on, blindly. She dared not go back the way she had come for fear of meeting again some of the hated band.

"I will keep ahead," she thought. "There must be a house somewhere, and I can get them to drive me home."

But though she walked on and on, no house appeared. She was faint with fatigue and hunger, and at last, as she came to the end of a road and found herself stranded in a great pasture, a sob caught in her throat.

She sat down on a rock and looked around. There seemed to be nothing in sight but rocks and scrubby bushes, and already twilight was descending over the land.

"I believe I am lost," she owned at last, "and if some one doesn't find me pretty soon, I shall have to stay out all night." _

Read next: Chapter 14. A Precious Pussy Cat

Read previous: Chapter 12. Lordly Launcelot

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